Tag Archives: selling

In the early days of Old Car City U.S.A., when it was still a general store the founder Walt Lewis sold a bit of everything. On a particular day a merchant pulled in the parking lot with a load of shoes he was looking to unload for a good price. Walt being a man always looking for bargain took the load of shoes for somewhere in the range of 5 cent a pair. Word traveled fast and soon people from all over were coming to take advantage of a good bargain.

Now in these days there was also another store located across the street. Walt’s competitor seen all the business the shoes were drawing in and decided they needed the shoes to help them draw business. They approached Walt with the proposal to buy the shoes, they struck a deal in which both parties were satisfied.

Same shoes only a few hundred feet from were they had been bringing Walt a great deal of customers didn’t have the same fait for Walts competitors. Time goes by and the now owners of all these shoes decided to go ask Walt if he would be interested in buying the shoes back at the same cost as he had sold them at. Walt counter offered them a price lower than the original price, so no deal was made.

Moving ahead several weeks Walt’s competition hatched a plan to get rid of the unselling shoes. They would write a letter posing as a store in Chattanooga that had heard Walt had a bunch of shoes and would be down in a few weeks to buy all the shoes at a price double what the new store had them for sale at. They had a person they new drop the letter in a mailbox from Chattanooga so the post mark would make it look official. The letter made its way back to Walt’s mailbox and the well crafted plan worked as intended. Walt came and bought the shoes at the price he had originally sold them to the competitor for. The weeks went by but the new buyer never showed up.

Fast forward to the 1980’s and Walt’s store that had been built in the 1920’s was tore down. The shoes that were still there waiting for the Chattanooga buyer was packed up and now sit in a few cars at Old Car City U.S.A.